Posted on 08/18/2006 12:24:13 PM PDT by neverdem
Ngoc Le heard his wife’s screams and ran from the back of the wireless store he owns in Camden, New Jersey. His wife was behind the counter, as was a masked man wielding a knife. The man brandished the blade, herding the couple into a back room. Once there, he tied the 28-year old businessman to a chair, then proceeded to rape 22-year old Kelly Le. Once the brutal rape had finished, he slit the couple’s throats, then ran away. There was no 2nd Amendment, no right to own a gun, and Antonio Diaz Reyes got away with murder.
That isn’t actually how the events of December 31st, 2004 played out. We do have a 2nd Amendment in this country, after all. So when Antonio Reyes held Kelly Le at knifepoint, Ngoc Le was able to shoot and kill the attacker with his legally owned firearm. DNA tests later determined that Reyes was responsible for a string of rapes in downtown Camden that had terrorized the city for months. The Le’s were shaken by what happened, but there were no regrets.
I was reminded of this armed citizen story when I read Tom Derby’s recent piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Derby, an English and reading teacher in Camden, New Jersey, says it’s time for the 2nd Amendment to go away. In fact, he says, “The premise of the Second Amendment, the need for minutemen, no longer exists. In a free society we must rely on the police. We have more important rights to fight for than the right to bear arms.”
Mr. Derby is an English teacher, so perhaps he can be forgiven for not knowing that the U.S. government has said our individual security and safety is not guaranteed by the law enforcement in this country. There are several Supreme Court decisions that hold citizens have no constitutional guarantee of protection by police (South v. Maryland and Castle Rock v. Gonzalez come immediately to mind), and many more decisions have been made at lower levels (in the case of Warren v. District of Columbia, for example, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that “a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.”). Despite what Mr. Derby says, we are responsible for our individual safety. The law enforcement community performs a valuable service each and every day, but any cop will tell you that they can’t be your personal bodyguard.
Tom Derby also says, “When wolves and human predators roamed freely Northeast, one was entitled to defend one’s family and property with firearms. Circumstances have changed; we need to reconsider that entitlement.” How have circumstances changed? Derby has taught in Camden, New Jersey for 18 years. He should be all too familiar with the human predators that still roam the streets. Camden, after all, was named the most dangerous city in America for the second year in a row last year, and has been in the top ten each of the past eight years, according to Morgan Quinto, the company that ranks cities on their crime rates. In 2004 the city’s murder rate was 60.8 per 100,000 residents, more than 11 times the national average. Its robbery rate was almost 8 times the national average, and its rate of aggravated assaults were more than 4 times the national average. Yet Derby says we should no longer be entitled to defend ourselves?
Derby seems to think that if we scrapped the 2nd Amendment, all the criminals in this country would lay down their weapons. Yet the criminal element doesn’t rely on the 2nd Amendment any more than child pornographers rely on the 1st Amendment. Get rid of the right to legally own firearms, and the gang members and street thugs plaguing Camden won’t even blink. But the legal gun owners, like Ngoc Le, will pay the price.
Tom Derby appears to be a teacher who cares a great deal about his students, and he should be commended for that. In his piece, he writes about several who have fallen victim to violence. One of the students he mentions, a boy named Len, was an “A” student who eventually joined a gang. Derby writes, “I lost track of Len, and a colleague brought me the bad news before the papers got it: He had become a professional assassin, and his own gang killed him and set his body on fire in a football field in North Camden.”
But Derby seems to be blaming Len’s death on an inanimate object, rather than the human beings who took Len’s life. Nothing is said about Len’s choices in life that placed him directly in the path of violence. In the end, Derby says it’s not a person responsible for Len’s death, but a thing.
It’s easy to take this approach. We don’t have to think ill of the dead, wondering why they chose a life of crime instead of a life inside the boundaries of the law. We don’t have to be angry with them for inflicting violence on others, because it’s not their fault. The devil didn’t make them do it, the gun did. But if we’re going to make excuses for the criminal behavior of those we love, we can’t expect them to change their ways.
My wife lived in Camden for nine years, and if she and I had never met, there’s a good chance that my 15-year old stepson would have been in Mr. Derby’s class. I know my wife would be glad that he had a teacher who cared about him, but she’d be livid knowing that his teacher thought she should be disarmed so she couldn’t protect her family from the wolves roaming the streets. I don’t think Mr. Derby is a bad man, just horribly misguided.
Sorry, but there is no state in which a citizen can go out and buy a newly made M4 rifle like many troops carry. None.
I know that, it's a federal deal, specifically a last minute amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act, of the mid 80's. IIRC 1986. And it's in blatant violation of the second amendment, The previous "tax based" restrictions (National Firearms Act) were too of course, but at least it wasn't a complete ban. Supreme Court has never ruled on either law. Never.
However you said:
Try buying a rifle like the troops carry (or even a defanged one that shoots one shot per trigger pull.)
I was responding to the part in bold. You can buy a semi-auto only clone of the M-4, a similar version in 7.62x51, or a SA clone of the M16A4. Complete with bayonet lug and flash hider. Just not the burst fire capability.
That's not that much of a loss, sustained rate of fire with burst is about 90 rpm, in semi-auto, it's 45 rpm. (M-16/M-4).
The waiting period part of the Brady Law has sunset. All that remains is the "instant" background check. However that can, in theory, result in up to a 3 day wait, IIRC. However it hasn't for me and I've bought 4 firearms since then, (plus one right before Brady went into effect (1911A1) and one (serious social purposes shotgun) right before it began to apply to long arms. Only bought two subject to the check though, the others were from private sellers, not subject to the law. The two checks took less than an hour each, how much less I'm not sure, since I wandered off to look at more guns. :) (both at gun shows).
Of course YMMV depending on your state. Some states do have waiting periods. And bans on things the federales do not.
There have been suspicious incidents of the instant check system being down, resulting in, at minimum, very long delays in purchasing firearms. IIRC, once was shortly after 911. Plus, even though the law required that the records of approved transactions be destroyed after approval, the system was designed to save them for an indefinite time. The current state of that seems to be that they are purged daily. However that's not to say they aren't on the backups for the computer system. The system could have easily been designed such that the data never made it out of RAM, unless the buyer was ineligible, but it wasn't. The Clinton administrating was keeping the records for an indefinite period.
But the principal is the same, requiring government permission to exercise a right.
Exactly.. The 2nd amendment is not protect our right for target practice or to own antique firearms.. like many Gun rights groups seem to suggest....
Did the NRA endorse Dole or not? What's that have to do with the Launtenberg Bill?
You're going to have to ask yourself the question, if those other gun groups are so important and powerful, Why didn't they stop the bill?
So does the fourth amendment. You think convicted criminals who have served their full sentences have no right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures? The courts have rulled that anyone who lives here is part of the group "The People" in conjunction with fourth amendment rights.
From Findlaw:
Another matter of scope recently addressed by the Court is the category of persons protected by the Fourth Amendment--who constitutes ''the people.'' This phrase, the Court determined, ''refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with [the United States] to be considered part of that community.'' 28 The Fourth Amendment therefore does not apply to the search and seizure by United States agents of property that is owned by a nonresident alien and located in a foreign country. The community of protected people includes U.S. citizens who go abroad, and aliens who have voluntarily entered U.S. territory and developed substantial connections with this country.
(28) United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 265 (1990).
Two, it's not called "Alaska carry" but rather "Vermont carry", Vermont has, AFAIK, never had any laws against bearing arms, concealed or not.
And what if an attacker shows up during that time? "Excuse me Mr. Rapist--would you mind coming back in a couple days when I have my gun?"
Also, please explain why people who are so dangerous they must be prevented from buying guns are not so dangerous that they belong in prison, and why the freedom of such people should be put ahead of the freedom of the law-abiding.
Except for the part of the NFA that applies to short barreled shotguns, and then the ruling was based on no evidence having be presented as to the military utility of such weapons. I think even the Supreme Court would have allowed taking judicial notice that a Thompson or a BAR had such utility.
It's really too bad Miller and his buddy didn't have one of those, as more notorious criminals of the time did.
I forget the exact language of the Board of Directors' statement (October 1996 issue of American Rifleman), but the implication was that if someone on the ballot is sufficiently anti-gun, you must support the person's opponent regardless of whether he's really pro-gun.
As soon as I read that statement, I sensed trouble. Shortly after it was published, I saw usenet postings from Gun Owners of America talking about the Lautenberg Act that would be coming up for a vote, but the NRA never said a peep about it.
Would the Lautenberg Act have received the support of all but two Republicans in the Senate, and IIRC the majority of Republicans in the House, about a month before an election no less, if such politicians didn't think their opponents were bad enough the NRA wouldn't do anything about them?
You're going to have to ask yourself the question, if those other gun groups are so important and powerful, Why didn't they stop the bill?
At least Gun Owner's of America tried. The NRA didn't even do that much.
For the first century and half, and a bit more, of the existence of the country, no federal law prohibited felons who had served their time from owning the means of self defense, most state laws did not either, probably none that date to the time of the passage of the second amendment and it's state constitutional analogs.
Baloney. The police cannot protect you; they cannot prevent crimes against you. All they can do is show up after the crime and take notes. If we want true protection, we must rely on ourselves.
I wasn't defending it, just explaining the current state of that law.
The cops rarely prevent a crime, they show up afterward, mop up the mess and try to locate the perp.
Tom Derby is a perfect example of what living in a city and being raised by a long line of people who are scared of/see no need for guns can do to a person's mindset on life in general. The bubble he apparently exists within is not representative of life everywhere, for everyone.
Let this guy spend a night alone at my uncle's farmhouse sometime a we'll see how he feels when a bunch of coyotes start yipping just beyond the bushes in the backyard. Or, when some clown who ran out of gas or slid his car into the ditch comes pounding on the door looking for help at midnight.
It's times like those, even if there is no true immediate danger, that one is comforted by the presence of the ol' shotgun in the closet. My uncle will help anyone who seems honest and truthful, but he never lets them in the house and he never goes out the door without his .38 revolver in his coat pocket.
Citified fools, that's all Derby and his ilk are.
I'm liking that nice chartreuse shade that Vermont is sporting on your map.
We need all 50 states to be that color.
Appellate courts may only take judicial notice of things over which there can be no reasonable controversy whatsoever. For example, that January 1, 1980 was a Tuesday, or that there are eight U.S. pints in a U.S. gallon, or that on May 19, 2003, George W. Bush was President of the United States. For the appellate courts to take judicial notice of something, it need not be well known, but it must be proven so far beyond question that no reasonable person could argue it.
To allow the court to take judicial notice of anything else would be to grant it a sort of "super-witness" status. Judges aren't perfect, after all (other than the Almighty Judge Greer, of course). If a lawyer's witness offers up "facts" that aren't true, the other lawyer can call his own witnesses to argue the opposite. There's no way, however, for lawyers to challenge a judge's own personal knowledge. If a judge decides to dismiss a personal injury complaint on the basis that 170 degree water isn't hot enough to cause injury, the plaintiff's lawyer would have no opportunity to challenge the judge's beliefs on that matter (or even to be aware of them until after the decision was handed down).
All controversial matters of fact, in all cases, must be examined in trial court. Other courts may only render final judgement on a case in the complete absense of any relevant disputed matters of fact.
Miller and Layton were inticted for possessing a sawed-off shotgun. A judge quashed the indictments without trial, on the basis that it violated the Second-Amendment rights of Miller and Layton. The Supreme Court found that the question of whether a sawed-off shotgun had military utility was (1) relevant, and (2) disputed. Thus, in the presence of relevant disputed facts, the case needed to go to trial court.
The funny thing is that the government, after winning the opportunity to bring the case to trial court, never bothered to do so. Rather odd for the government to offer a plea bargain for time served in a case it had just won the right to prosecute. Of course, had it lost in trial court, it wouldn't have been able to lie about the nature of its "victory" at the USSC.
BTTT, for later comment.
Sorry, I had you confused with California Patriot who thought the Brady Act was constitutional.
BTW, another point to consider: rights are meaningless without remedies. If one regards the Second Amendment as absolute with regard to non-slaves (note that felons could be branded as slaves if states chose to do so), then the implied remedy is that any government action which violates the Second Amendment is void, any any official who seeks to carry out such action is a criminal acting without authority, and may be regarded as any other criminal.
By contrast, if one decides that the Brady Act is legitimate if and only if it doesn't cause delays for legitimate purchasers, what remedy will legitimate purchasers have when it does cause delays?
I can readily believe that there have been implementation problems that are unfair to gun purchasers. Fixing them, and ensuring good-faith implementation, should be a high priority.
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